Baseball no longer America's Pastime

It's said to be as American as apple pie, cooking steaks on the grill, fast food chains and all of the other things that are synonymous with American culture, but Major League Baseball, America's pastime, isn't as popular as it once was.

With the 2011 MLB season underway, I've had conversations with many different people about the sport over the past few weeks, and none of the discussions have been about the games or who I think will win the pennant this year. 

The talks have been about the lack of black athletes in the sport, why the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies are trying to buy a championship and why people don't care about Major League Baseball, in general, these days.

It's quite obvious if you think about it. We live in a society where everything moves at 100 miles per hour. We live fast-paced lives and we get entertainment from high-intensity, fast-paced sports. That's not the only reason that baseball isn't as popular as it used to be, but it surely is one.

This lifestyle change is reflective in the sports that are popular. People flock to football because of its high intensity, big hits, big players and the fact that every single game means so much. Sports fans and people, in general, don't have as much free time as past generations did. 

The 164-game baseball season, which spans almost 8 months and has teams playing almost daily throughout that time, doesn't bring the same amount of excitement that it has in the past.

There isn't any urgency or reason to care about baseball until late September. There isn't anything that makes me care how a team starts the season because it won't matter in three months. 

Teams like the Cleveland Indians and Pittsburgh Pirates start off the season with great records and play well through the first 10 games, but it doesn't matter in July when both teams have played 80 games and are out of contention.

There are many reasons why the sport of baseball is losing its popularity. The societal change to a more fast-paced lifestyle that works inversely with the long, meaningless baseball season is just one reason. Another reason is that the sport has been tarnished by an era of steroid usage, cheating and the validity of all records broken in the past 15 seasons up for debate.

The sport of baseball has taken one hit after another over the past years, and it seems that this decline of America's pastime isn't going to end anytime soon. 

Major League Baseball has turned itself into a segregated sport in the terms of its fans' desire to watch games. People only want to watch the game of their favorite team. This is something that is not occurring in other sports. When Peyton Manning and Tom Brady face off on Monday Night Football, everyone watches it.

When two of the top stars in baseball face off against each other, and by stars I mean the Phillies, Yankees or Red Sox, not too many people tune into it, unless it's October. 

Even then, season six of "Dancing with the Stars" is still going to draw a large portion of the sports audience because some washed up football player is on it.